Xiaomi will stop bundling the charger with its next flagship smartphone

Chinese electronics company Xiaomi has confirmed unbundling the requisite charger from its upcoming Mi 11 smartphone after it was openly mocking Apple on social media for doing precisely the same thing with the new iPhone 12 smartphone lineup.

File this one in the “oh no, they didn’t” drawer: Xiaomi’s upcoming Mi 11, which is set to be officially unveiled at a press conference today, will not ship with a charger in the box — I repeat, no charger in the box. According to The Verge, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun confirmed the news on the Chinese social media site Weibo.

Interestingly enough, the Chinese company defended the decision using exactly the same reasoning as Apple: everyone has a charger so bundling and shipping these things in smartphone boxes around the world is bad for the environment.

According to Xiaomi’s social media post in bad English:

Everyone has a lot of unused chargers today, which is your trouble and the burden of the environment. We know that this decision may no be understood or even criticized. Is there a better solution between industry practices and environmental protection? Next Monday, let’s talk at the Xiaomi 11 press conference.

Xiaomi’s marketing folks are shooting themselves in the foot: shortly after the iPhone 12 line launched, Xiuamo couldn’t resist ridiculing Apple’s decision on social media by issuing a tweet that proclaimed the company “didn’t leave anything out of the box” of its own Mi 10T phone.

Xiaomi is not alone in this: Samsung also took to social media to paint Apple’s decision to remove the charger from the iPhone 11 and iPhone 12 boxes as a user-hostile one.

But just a few weeks later, it took down those mocking ads as Korean media alleged Samsung is considering ditching the charger and the earbuds from the box for its upcoming Galaxy S21.

I’d like to pose one simple question to folks managing Samsung’s and Xiamoi’s social media presence and marketing efforts: Seriously, was it all really worth it? You mocked Apple over charger removal even though you perfectly knew you’d be soon doing the same thing. And what that tells us is that you’re either very insecure or your moral compass is non-existent.

I’m not sure which is worse.